Otto Warmbier, American student detained in North Korea, dies

Jun 19, 2017

Otto Warmbier arriving at a court for his trial in Pyongyang, March 16, 2015. (Xinhua/Lu Rui via Getty Images)

(JTA) — Otto Warmbier, an American student who was held in North Korea for over 17 months and returned home comatose to Ohio last week, has died. He was 22.

“It is our sad duty to report that our son, Otto Warmbier, has completed his journey home,” Warmbier’s family told ABC News on Monday. “Surrounded by his loving family, Otto died today at 2:20 p.m.”

The Cincinnati native and University of Virginia undergraduate was traveling on a student tour of North Korea last year when he was arrested and sentenced to 15 years of hard labor for taking down a propaganda poster.

When he was released last week in a coma, doctors said that all regions of Warmbier’s brain had suffered extensive damage.

“It would be easy at a moment like this to focus on all that we lost — future time that won’t be spent with a warm, engaging, brilliant young man whose curiosity and enthusiasm for life knew no bounds,” the family said in a statement. “But we choose to focus on the time we were given to be with this remarkable person.”

JTA reported last week that Warmbier was active at the University of Virginia Hillel after participating in a Birthright trip to Israel in 2014.

The university’s Hillel director, Rabbi Jake Rubin, called him “a beloved member of our Hillel community.”